Rolling Stone
by BlairCorneliaBass
Summary: A rolling stone gathers no moss, as goes the life of Chuck Bass. Warning: angst with an unhappy ending. One-shot.


A/N: This is not typical of my writing; in fact, this is my first attempt at angst. I'm not saying this is what I want to happen, or that it's even in character. It's just been going through my mind a lot, and well, with the recent news, I feel it's okay to post it.

Rolling Stone

_A rolling stone gathers no moss_

Early in life, it had been his motto. His excuse for many things. Later in life, it was his curse.

It was always his main struggle with all of his relationships. For so long he rebelled against his father, hating him and wanting nothing more than to be free of him. Of course when that wish was fulfilled, he could see that it was really the exact opposite he'd wanted.

And then there was Blair. His first taste of romance. His first chance at real love.

He'd run away from it so many times, just a scared little boy each time chasing after something more comfortable. And she'd done it too, but not as many times as he did. And not when it mattered so much.

When he finally said the words back and she received them without recrimination, he thought things had finally fell into place and he wouldn't have to roll away anymore.

He'd been right for a time- they'd been strong, and united, and in love for many months after.

And it wasn't that he minded the stability, the levelness. Perhaps it was simply that for his whole life he had never had it before, never grew accustomed to it.

Maybe it was the presence of another contributor of the Bass line; they had always poisoned him when they got too close.

Maybe he always knew he'd do something to fuck it all up.

Jack had come back and it was soon after the anniversary of his father's death; she knew it was a bad time for him, but for a few nights she had been busy with other things. And mostly he had just kept company with a large bottle of scotch, but one night he decided to venture out.

He didn't remember making the decision, didn't remember the conscious leap from one life to another. He only realized what had happened when her small gasp awoke him from sleep and he felt the warm body next to him. Comprehended slowly as his eyes locked with her brown ones in an endless second that it was not hers.

He ran after her, but she was too quick. As quickly as he could, he got out of his suite, leaving the whore in their bed still, and drove to her house. However the guards would not let him in. The whole night and the next day he waited for her to come out, but she never did. She would not answer her phone. Would not visit her friends.

A week after she came to the suite with a soft knock on the door. He nearly fell to the floor when he opened it to see her.

"Blair," he could only breathe out, staring at her as if she were a mirage.

It took awhile before she could meet his eyes. Her gaze started from the floor and ran up all the way to level with his. He noted, strangely, that it did not appear to be out of hesitation, but rather as if she were merely taking her time. Memorizing the moment.

"Chuck," she returned in a voice he had never heard before.

It scared him.

In the last torturous week, he had envisaged this moment over and over. His mind had conjured up her sobbing, throwing things at him, screaming out her fury. Certainly it was not a moment to look forward to.

And yet he wished now that she were doing those things.

Because if she had that much hurt, that much betrayal- it meant that she loved him still. It was the unavoidable balance of passion- one could not love so entirely without hating just as equally.

But she walked quietly with small steps into the apartment. The apartment that up until a week ago, he had always, yet unofficially, considered theirs.

If she forgave him, he would make it official. The second she nodded her head.

If he were leading, he would have directed them to the living room, the kitchen, anywhere but the bedroom to talk. But she walked purposefully towards it, never even glancing back as she did so, her shoulders held high.

She opened the doors to the room and he wondered how it must appear to her now. The sanctuary of so many months for them, another place he would have considered sacred. And all of it was wiped away with the stain of one night.

She sat on the edge of the bed. It was neither his or her side because it had all been theirs. But a week ago another woman had slept in the exact spot she sat now.

No doubt that was why she chose it.

She carefully laid her purse on the side, as if she were in a stranger's residence and not a place she would have considered partly home just a few days before. She politely folded her hands into her lap and looked up at him.

"I've already made my decision," she stated in that new dispassionate voice. "I'm only here for the explanation."

He stared at her. The small declaration sank into his consciousness the same as if her sharp claws had slowly dug into his gut.

But he had known he would beg, had planned it well in advance. There would be no dignity tonight and he did not care so long as it worked.

So he slipped onto his knees, onto the expensive mahogany floor, and tentatively reached out to touch her hands. She drew them away, slowly, politely. Her face registered no change.

"Please, just an explanation," she repeated sedately.

He looked down at the floor, expelling a breath so that it left his body slumped and crooked. He tried to draw strength for what he needed to do. And yet how to explain what had no reason?

"I don't know," he answered, sounding as if he mourned the answer as much as she did. He shook his head. "I don't know why I did it."

Because she knew him, and she knew that he had been angry and drinking and hateful and nasty these past weeks. And even if those were factors, were they really excuses?

She probably understood better than he did.

But if she already knew, then why was she here?

He looked up at her and she gazed back with a pitying expression.

He could take pity. He had done everything to avoid it his whole life, but from her he would take anything.

"One mistake," he pleaded, and in a rash movement he grasped her hands tightly in his. "And it was terrible. But we can get past this."

She did not remove her hands from his, but they were not holding back. They were limp and cold. He wanted to rub them together, just to make sure blood was pumping through her veins.

"I need to know one thing," she requested, politely enough, though he noticed her voice starting to crack. "It's for the sake of my future, so please be honest."

He stared at her, wondering where the hell her mind was at.

"What is _wrong_ with me?" Now her voice had totally dissolved, and her body shook as the tears started to fall. "What do I need to change so that this won't happen to me again? Why aren't I ever enough?"

And the way she said it, so pleadingly, as if there was something so simple about her that she had overlooked all these years and if she just took it out, she would be whole.

"Nothing," he choked out, gripping her hands in his and kissing them. "There's nothing about you that needs to change. You're perfect."

She only shook her head, small gasps escaping as she bowed it towards her lap.

"That's the thing," he continued in his rasping voice. "I never deserved you. None of them have deserved you."

The drops of water continued to rain from her eyes onto his hand. They seared his flesh, so hot they must have cleansed it.

"But I'll try," he swore, bravely placing his hands on her face. "I'll try until I do deserve you."

Somehow this stemmed the flow of tears. He would have been cautiously relieved except that her expression did not return to life. It faded back to remoteness.

"I can't do it, Chuck," she breathed. "I can't be the girl who stayed even though she was cheated on again. I don't want to be her anymore."

And he wanted to promise her that it would never happen again. But he had thought that when they'd finally gotten together- believed he would never break her heart again.

His promises meant nothing.

"I have tried," she insisted, looking down at her lap. "This whole week I tried so hard to get past it." She shrugged her shoulders and spoke more softly. "It probably wouldn't have been a surprise just a year ago." She raised her face to stare at him. "But things have changed since then."

"You're right," he agreed, grasping onto this admission like a lifeline. "We've changed. We're stronger and we trust each other now. We've matured."

He could have swallowed his words as soon as they came out. Because after what he'd done- how could he say that he'd matured? And how could she trust him?

"I haven't changed," she said, taking his thoughts. "If I stay, it means I won't have changed."

He could feel the burn of tears on the back of his eyeballs and he looked down, still kneeling in his thousand dollar suit, on his perfect floor. He saw none of it.

A certain amount of time elapsed and he was sure neither of them knew how much. The next thing he was aware of was the touch of her cool hand on his wet cheek.

"Give me just one last time, Chuck," she breathed, cupping his face. "That's all I'll ask from you."

He stared at her and swallowed hard. It was a few moments before he could speak. "Don't call it that," he pleaded roughly. "There will never be a last time for us."

And here she stared at him blankly. She got off the bed and began walking to the door.

He ran and caught up with her before she could twist the knob.

"Wait- wait," he panted, despite the lack of exertion. "Don't go. I just can't-" he fumbled for words for a second. "Don't leave things like this."

She raised her hand to his cheek once more. "Don't talk," she commanded softly.

He didn't want this. If this was the only thing she wanted from him- if this was her preferred farewell to him- he wouldn't make it through. But how many other things had he taken away from her?

In this was their beginning and maybe they could start again through the combining of their bodies. If anything, he wanted to take away the blankness of her manner.

So he ripped at her clothes, tore away the dainty, modest dress she had covered herself in. His mouth covered hers completely, his hands ravaging her form. He was fighting, carving a place in her life again. Battling against the barriers.

She did not fight back. She traced her fingers around his skin like the summer before, like every cell was precious. Her eyes drank in the sight of their bodies melding, hardly closing. The touch of her lips were only ever soft and adoring.

In every gesture she was whispering her farewell.

"Don't," he cried out as his body slammed into hers. "Don't give up on us."

She only wiped away the wetness running down his face. Her eyes closed finally and he felt their bodies close together, tightening and coiling until they both erupted.

He had meant to stay awake. He had wrapped her in his arms so that she would never be able to leave. But it had been an exhausting day, a sleepless week, and his body had only so much strength.

The morning dawned with only a note in her place.

_Give me space_

He found out that she boarded a plane to Paris that night. Transferred to a university there and all. She did not return to the states, not even for holidays, but rather Eleanor and her husband went there to meet them. He had photos taken of her every so often, just to see when her eyes returned. When the life came back in her eyes, he knew then that he could come to her. She graduated, but still stayed in Europe, moving around a couple of times.

It was in Italy that she met him.

He was the dream come true of her earlier years- the kind of white knight that materialized straight from her scrapbook. He was a prince of a small but wealthy country. She became a modern day Grace Kelly, just like she always wanted.

And in her pictures she smiled more often after that, but her eyes still did not return.

But when the papers announced their engagement, he could not wait for her eyes.

Money could buy marvelous things, and if there was one thing he knew, it was how to bribe the servants. He entered her room that was crimson and satin. Met her wide eyes in the vanity as she sat finishing her make-up.

And it had been years and yet he knew her just the same as if she had never left.

She could demand a hundred things from him but for her he only had one.

"Tell me that you love him."

_More than you loved me._ Both knew it; neither had to say it.

She closed the cap on her lipstick and placed it on the golden vanity. "He can't hurt me."

It was so long ago. So long and despite the distance and the time it was still them. How could she not see that?

"Tell me that you don't love me."

She turned to face him. It was probably the tremor in his voice which caused it, or the slight shaking of his body. Who knew that at the end of it, he would be the one to insist on fairytales.

She stood up, in her regal dress and sparkling jewels, and he saw that she had really become the queen she had always wished to be.

"The girl in Manhattan, that Blair- you have her." She gazed steadily into his eyes, and whispered the words soothingly, as if he were an upset child. "She will always be yours."

She gave him his goodbye- the one that he did not take the last time. His eyes never closed and they devoured every cell of her skin.

The day she married her prince was the day his eyes died.

He lived his life fast, and it inherently sped up its expectancy. But at the very end of it, when he no longer had any earthly ties, he still swore that she was his.

A rolling stone may gather no moss, but it sure as hell gets cut and bruised on its way down.


End file.
